April 12, 2007

News organizations will sell a service, not a product

I think a group might consider working on a paper -- sort of the next phase of Geneva Overholser's "manifesto" -- a call for a new approach to ownership, and especially the management and outputs of the "convener" of news in a community. It is not going to be a newspaper -- centralized daily printing is going to become a niche product for rich people -- it is going to be a 24/7, platform-agnostic nerve center that finds, organizes, shares and makes sense of information from a vast array of paid, volunteer, independent and partisan sources -- and then serves it how you want it, when you want it.

It will be a service organization -- like a law or accounting firm -- and it will be paid accordingly. At first, it will be extremely difficult to convince people to pay for such a service. But as the years go by, it will be seen as an absolutely indispensible way to get through the day. People will become as reliant on their "newshare" as on their car, doctor, parent or colleague. Larger cities will have competing "newshares" offering the inforamtion valet service.

They will compete largely on technical grounds -- who does the better sort, who finds the real gems, and who provides premium information at the right price bundle. Advertising will be part of all this, but it will be an option -- if you are willing to receive advertising, the cost of your "newshare" will be less.

You will actually be PAID for you attention when you look at an ad, and that payment will be a credit to an account which you can then use to purchase premium information. An ebb and flow of info-currency, depending upon whether it is information you ***want*** or information someone ****wants you to have.****